


Through the Side Door

by via_ostiense



Category: Alan Bennett - The History Boys
Genre: M/M, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007, recipient:quantumseraph
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-15 17:29:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/163151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/via_ostiense/pseuds/via_ostiense
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>POSNER: Yet have I burst the bars / Stood face to face with beauty</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through the Side Door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quantumseraph](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=quantumseraph).



_The stage is split in half. One side is the classroom and Irwin and Dakin are inside. One side is bare aside from a few objects suggesting a hospital room: an IV rig, a monitor. Irwin, wearing a patient's gown, sits in a wheelchair and watches the classroom. Posner and Dakin are also present. Within the classroom, Irwin and Dakin have their confrontation about Corpus. The invitation to drinks is issued and duly accepted. At the same time, the observers speak._

 _In the hospital room_  

Posner   
"Yet have I burst the bars,   
Stood face to face with beauty"

Irwin   
I didn't. I never did.

Dakin   
After - the wheelchair. I thought about it sometimes.

Posner   
Did you? You didn't only think, I'm sure.   
I don't know which is unlikelier, your thinking at all or your thinking and not acting.

Dakin   
Maybe. In the classroom, before the accident, there was something.

Posner   
Knew it.

Irwin   
The accident was fortuitous. I lost the use of my legs and a good two weeks of my memory, but I am told   
there was nothing interesting there.

 _Irwin rubs his thigh, as if massaging an ache. Or hoping to feel one._  

Irwin   
Pain, mostly, and needles.   
Still, the accident kept me straight.

Dakin   
Timid.

 _Irwin turns to Dakin_

Irwin   
Honest. Moral.

Dakin   
I say timid. Scared, like a mouse.

Irwin   
Do you call it being scared, to say no to a student? I am now a cripple, but I was never a child molester. The accident kept me that way. It brought me to my senses.

Posner   
Does it count if it's an accident?

 _To Irwin_    
You meant to go on with it. It's only a skid of the tyres that you never had that drink. That euphemism.

 _To Dakin_    
You're disingenuous. You never meant to carry through with the euphemism and you must be glad that you didn't have to. The wheelchair's only an excuse.

Dakin   
I did, too. I asked him. And barring accidents it would have happened.

Posner   
There is no barring accidents. You either do it or you don't. And you call him timid.

 _They watch the classroom._

Irwin   
Only I think I just had a better offer.

Dakin  
I think you did. And we're not in the subjunctive either. It is going to happen.

 _They begin the scene again._

 _In the hospital room_

Posner  
It's not being moral to deny something that's not offered.

Irwin  
It was offered. And I chose not to take it, after the accident.

Posner  
No. It was offered but you avoided it. You didn't choose not to take it. Two different things, sir.

Irwin  
I was in the hospital for three months. When I got out, term had begun. You'd all gone up.

Posner  
That's an excuse. It's a rationalization. It's not being moral.   
The only way it would have been moral is if you had sought out Dakin for a drink. He came down every break first year. If you'd had a drink and then said no to the rest, making a drink a drink and not a euphemism, you would have been moral.   
You've got to make a choice. Morality isn't about avoiding temptation by default.

Irwin   
I was in the hospital. 

Posner   
You were. But you did make a choice.

 _In the classroom_

Irwin   
Only I think I just had a better offer.

 _In the hospital room_

Posner   
The only moral man is the one who invites temptation head on.

Irwin   
That's sophistry.

Dakin   
That's you, sir.

 _In the classroom_

Dakin   
And we're not in the subjunctive either. It is going to happen.

 _They begin the scene again._

 _In the hospital room_

Posner   
We have established that Irwin is not moral; that he would have engaged in the euphemism, whatever he tells himself now. I think he lies to himself now out of disappointment.

Irwin   
Wait one moment. You said that the moral man is the one who invites temptation. Calls it out and flirts with it, as it were.

Dakin   
He did, sir.

Irwin   
Posner has also pointed out that I said yes to you, all those years ago. What else is that but inviting temptation?   
Temptation came to me and I courted it. Ergo, I am moral.

Posner   
Do you call that being moral, sir?

Irwin   
You can't have it both ways! Either I faced temptation--ergo, I am moral--or I faced temptation--ergo, I am immoral? Which is it?

Dakin   
Both. Neither.

Irwin   
It must be one or the other, they can't both be true.

Posner   
What's truth got to do with it? What's truth got to do with anything?

Dakin   
That's you again, sir.

Posner   
The only thing that matters is what you think is true, or what I think is true. Maybe even what Dakin thinks is true. I think you were immoral, that you would have met up for a drink and a euphemism.

Irwin   
I don't know what I think.

Posner   
Then you agree with me.

 _In the classroom_

Dakin   
Because I went round to look at the fucking college, that's why it matters.   
Because I imagined you there.

 _In the hospital room_

Posner   
Having addressed the question of Irwin, we now come to Dakin.

Dakin   
I would've gone through with it. Sucking him off, I mean. Or him sucking me off.

Irwin   
Yes?

Dakin   
Yes.

Posner   
No.

Dakin   
I would have.

Posner   
You didn't visit him once in the hospital.   
Sorry, sir. I don't mean to hurt you, but it's true.

Dakin   
I did, too!

Posner   
With the whole class and Totty, when Irwin was still unconscious. You never came back again.

Dakin   
How do you know?

Posner   
I was there. I wanted company.

Dakin   
I couldn't do it. When we visited, Irwin's glasses were folded up on the nightstand. I looked at him and didn't recognize him. No diary, no glasses.   
This wasn't Irwin.

Posner   
Ironically, what Dakin had always wanted--to see Irwin stripped down, forced to admit there was a truth, a solid, physical truth--was what he saw in the hospital room.   
He had wanted to see Irwin on his knees, sucking him off and realizing that some things--love, desire--are absolutely true and there's no way to turn them upside down or inside out.

Dakin   
You can't fake lust.

Posner   
The literature agrees.

Dakin   
"Lay your sleeping head, my love,   
Human on my faithless arm."

The art wins in the end. It reveals the truths and refuses to be explained away.

Posner   
Unconscious in the hospital bed, Irwin's body, sans glasses and sans diary, was admitting that he already knew there were absolute truths. Newton's laws. Physics. He does not know why Hector crashed, but having crashed, there were certain rules that came into force. Momentum. Inertia. The conservation of energy. A body in motion will stay in motion and when it hits the road, the energy will go somewhere. The body will break. Irwin knew this and the casts on his body were the proof.

Dakin   
It's why I couldn't stand the wheelchair.

Posner   
I stand corrected. You would have gone through with the euphemism, were it not for the wheelchair.

Dakin   
Yes. No. I don't know. I wanted to, before. And then after, there didn't seem to be any point.   
So I avoided him, too.   
Sorry, sir.

Irwin   
There's nothing to be sorry for. At least you're honest.

 _In the classroom_

Dakin   
At least you lied. And lying's good, isn't it? We've established that.   
Lying works.   
Except that you ought to learn to do it properly.

 _In the hospital room_

Posner   
So, we have concluded that Irwin wanted to suck Dakin off and that Dakin wanted him to do it. But for various reasons it didn't happen and now, fifteen years later, we are at an impasse.

Irwin   
I knew when you were in town on break. I was at Jesus, I knew the term schedule.   
I didn't avoid you because I was being moral. I avoided you because it left open the possibility for a drink. If I'd asked and you'd said no, it would have been gone.   
Posner's right. I am not moral. I was living in the subjunctive.

Dakin   
You were on the telly last night.

Posner   
Irwin frequently is. He is a spokesman for the government, using his journalist's tricks to convince the nation that up is down, the earth is blue and the sky is brown. I do not know if he believes what he says or if it is still a game.

Dakin   
When you're on the telly, I try to see through your arguments. I wonder if I could convince you. Possibly I could, since you possibly do not believe in what you're saying.   
So I still think about it. What if we had, would we have.   
Sometimes I think we should. We might even have our euphemism now. We still could.

Irwin   
Despite the wheelchair.

Dakin   
Despite the wheelchair. I'm a lawyer. I've become used to sophists and liars. I've turned into one myself.

Posner   
Dakin never really believed Hector's talk about literature, songs, and movies.   
He never really believed Irwin's talk of the irrelevance of truth.   
Older and wiser, he realizes that they were both right, but incompletely so.

Irwin   
Let's have a drink.

Dakin   
Maybe Sunday. What do you do on a Sunday afternoon?

Irwin   
Maybe now. What do you do on a Wednesday evening?

Dakin   
Find loopholes in tax codes. Only I think I just had a better offer.

Irwin   
I think you did. And we're not in the subjunctive either. It is going to happen.

 _They exit_

Posner   
Like Hector, I am simply a teacher. An observer. I point out flaws, I untangle inconsistencies. When I try to love, it becomes fatiguing.   
I am left with indifference.   
Journalism.

 _He exits_


End file.
